If you think Baazaar is going to be anyway close to Martin Scorsese’s Wolf of Wall Street, I must warn you to not have high expectations with this one. Directed by Gauravv K Chawla, it has Saif Ali Khan alright and some genuinely engaging moments where the adrenaline rush of the stock markets makes us sit up and take notice, but mostly, you would be just trying to stifle a chuckle at how bizarre the “bazaar” proceedings are.
Saif is Shakun Kothari, a Gujrati businessman who believes all is fair as long as one makes money. At his wife’s charity function he utters lines like “log kehte hain paisa bhagwaan nahi, main kehta hoon bhagwaan se kam bhi nahi”! While the menacing intensity and ‘greed in the eyes’ look suits Khan well there is actually very little that he has to work with.
He has been given a prominent streak of white hair that magically appears and disappears at will. And how could one forget the mehnat that has gone into getting the “gujju” accent right. So “family “ becomes “femly” and “all” becomes “ol” and here too the inconsistencies are consistent!`
On very expected lines, Shakun Kothari’s moral moorings have never come in the way of him making a fortune! Idolising this trait and his share market antics is Allahabaad ka small time stockbroker Rizwan Ahmed. Rohan Mehra marking his debut tries to imbue the character with a sort of well meaning earnestness that is endearing but looks out of depth each time he shares the frame with Saif Ali Khan, who despite the god-awful accent, holds his own.
Shakun Kothari by his own admission believes in numbers and math. Rizwan Khan is all about emotions and gut. The two are pitted against each other as writers Aseem Arora and Pervez Sheikh try to give us an insight into the cut throat and tantalisingly unpredictable world of share markets. But the contrivances are so silly that one finds it hard to take the narrative seriously. Words like “insider information” , “shares” and “market” “sensex” “loss and gains” fly around and just when we begin to understand which way the story is headed there is a song ready to disrupt us.
In fact there are songs for every situation. When Rizwan Ahmed does his first successful deal is when he makes a blunder. Radhika Apte gives him company and at times even a tip off on which shares to buy and which ones to sell.
In an uber glam avatar, she is clearly having fun with precious little to do. Playing Kothari’s wife is Chitrangada Singh, pouting away to glory. There are times when it’s difficult to fathom if she is crying or smiling because the pout defiantly always makes its presence felt.
At one point SEBI gets after Kothari and he hatches a plan to get them off his back. Predictable but we still buy into into it. Soon, Rizwan chalks out an arrangement to have Kothari arrested and that just stretches credulity to snapping point.
Baazaar closes on a low! I’d say be penny wise and give it a miss. 1.5 QUINTS out of 5!
Producer: Bilal Jaleel
Edit: Ashish MacCune
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